Joseph Gerth | New U.S. Rep. Massie should be interesting

Jan. 6, 2013

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If you like Rand Paul, last week’s performance by new U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie should mean you’ll love him.

Those who aren’t fans of Kentucky’s junior senator? Not so much.

It has nothing to do with the fact that both legislators have similar curly mops perched atop their heads.

Massie, who represents Kentucky’s 4th District, ended the 112th Congress on Tuesday by voting against the so-called “fiscal cliff” legislation brokered by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Joe Biden.

Then, he opened the new 113 session of Congress by promptly voting against the $9 billion Hurricane Sandy relief bill that will send much needed money to the Northeast, which was devastated by the storm just days before the November election.

To top it off, he then filed a bill that would repeal the federal Gun Free School Zones Act of 1990, which made it a federal crime to knowingly possess a gun within 1,000 feet of a school.

All three are the things that tea partiers, who are more than abundant in his district that runs from Oldham County, along the Ohio River, to Ashland, absolutely love.

The two votes, they would tell you, go directly to the heart of the nation’s financial troubles. “We have a spending problem and not a revenue problem,” Massie, Rand and their backers are likely to say.

And the repeal of the Gun Free School Zones Act, which was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush? That is a prime example of a too big government taking away too many of your rights.

Do you know who filed to repeal the legislation during the 112th Congress? Former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, of Texas, the father of Rand Paul, that’s who. He was pushing for it for years.

But those same positions drive liberals, moderates and even some conservatives absolutely crazy.

Failure to pass fiscal cliff legislation would have caused major economic upheaval world-wide. Experts warned that the layoffs that would have taken place because of $1.3 billion in automatic, across the board spending cuts that could have thrown the U.S. into a second recession had a compromise not been reached.

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As McConnell pointed out on the floor of the Senate just before the vote, the deal stopped income taxes from increasing to pre-George W. Bush era tax rates for all but the wealthiest Americans.

“This plan is Washington kicking the can down the road,” Massie said in a press release. “The modest spending cuts agreed to in the 2011 debt ceiling deal are postponed by this bill.”

He’s right in that the agreement doesn’t fully address the issue and that Congress will have to do more to avoid across the board cuts in just a couple months.

But, he’s wrong in his claim that the agreement does nothing to address the solvency of Social Security. Anyone who received a pay check on Friday saw that their Social Security withholding went up as a result of Congress allowing President Barack Obama’s 2-year-old tax holiday to lapse.

That tax holiday, which was never intended to be permanent, reduced Social Security withholding from about 6 percent of your paycheck to just over 4 percent of it. Obama originally wanted to extend the tax holiday but dropped the idea in the face of Republican opposition.

Massie didn’t issue a statement on his vote against Hurricane relief but some tea partiers have said they opposed the measure because it had a small amount of pork and because the cost of it was not offset by $9.7 billion worth of spending cuts.

New Kentucky 6th District U.S. Rep. Andy Barr also voted against the measure.

Let’s hope that the 4th and 6th Districts aren’t struck by natural disasters anytime soon, because legislators in the Northeast, both Republican and Democrat, aren’t at all pleased by what they consider a lack of empathy from their colleagues.

But love him or hate him, it appears Massie’s going to be interesting to watch.